FEATURE > BRENT MASON
Nashville session ace Brent Mason
discusses his new recording how-to DVD,
his heavily modified ’ 68 Tele workhorse,
and how sight-reading can sometimes
make him “sweat blood.”
By JOe chaRupakORN
The session ace’s new DVD,
Brent Mason: Recording Guitar
[musicPROmedia], offers a
behind-the-scenes look at the
inner workings of a typical
tracking session. The nearly
two-hour video is a must-see
for any guitarist interested in
learning about the creative pro-
cess of putting together guitar
parts at a professional level.
Even if you have no interest in
session work, the video offers
useful tips and insights about
creating complementary guitar
parts and choosing the right
gear for the job. A good por-
tion of the DVD documents
Mason’s process of layering
guitar tracks (it even includes
PDFs of notated transcrip-
tions), including his rationale
for when to use different
instruments, and how to punch
in tricky parts. At the end, you
get to hear the fully arranged
finished product. Shred fans
will also delight in seeing
Mason record four improvised
passes of a hellacious solo, with
a great moment in the third
pass when Mason adds more
drive to his tone but then stops
cold during the outro solo,
shakes his head, and says, “The
overdrive doesn’t work on this.”
We recently caught up with
Mason to talk about how the
studio scene has changed over
the years, and to get advice on
dealing with the creative and
business aspects of being a work-
ing guitarist. Oh, and of course
we talked chops and gear, too.
What makes a great session
player?
The idea is to walk out of there
with people going, “Wow, he
must play that every day. He lives
and breathes that.” If you sit me
in a studio, I’ll make sure that
by the time I’m out of there it
sounds like I’ve been playing that
music every night. I can go from
a jazz session one day to playing hillbilly twang on an Alan
Jackson session the next. There
are lots of Nashville guys like
that, who can really play. Even
though everybody correlates my
style with a certain type of country or country rock, I like and
play jazz and all kinds of music.
Are there any cons to being a
session cat?
The only negative thing about
the studio scene—and I don’t
really want to call it negative—
is that you kind of lose who
you are, because you become
such a chameleon. And you
become such a perfectionist
that, after a while, you might
not like anything anymore. Like
when somebody wants to send
you some music and you start
thinking, “Well, I know it’s not
going to be good, but go ahead
and send it.”
People are recording at home
now more than ever. With the
ease of cutting and pasting,
even non-musicians today are
putting out tracks from pasted
loops. How has that affected
the studio scene?
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PREMIER GUITAR FEBRUARY 2012 115
